Kissing the Beehive
by Penelope-Z
Summary: *slash* Four things that never happened to Harry or Draco. And now the floodgates cannot hold, all my sorrow, all my rage.


Warning: Rated an R, due to a slash pairing. Please avoid this fic if you are not comfortable with the idea of a same sex romantic pairing.

Also the fic makes no sense. Don't expect any order as far as time, space or grammar are concerned. 

  
Disclaimer: If the characters were mine they wouldn't wear those tacky Quidditch robes. Alas, they're JKR's and she dresses them in gold and red and silver and whatnot.

Take One

  
  
Harry thought he knew what to expect.   
  
Professor Snape's touches were swift and bony and no unnecessary motions were made, but every slide and push were orchestrated steps towards the obvious goal, getting rough and spasmodic at the end, like the last convulsions.   
  
Snape had a body made of angles, designed for self-preservation, all knees and elbows and jutting cheekbones. Harry never found out if there was any human skin hidden underneath the starched robes.  
  
He was prepared for the pressure of a foreign mouth over his pulsepoints, for the belt buckle biting metal teeth into his thigh, for the weight of a palm over his eyes. The weight that drove him blindly down, lower, into the ground where for a moment he thought he belonged. It didn't feel like being loved, or even fucked, it mostly felt like being throttled.  
  
But Harry knew a thing or two about self-preservation also. He could pretend the body was something outside of him, something that could be held and handled while he retreated to the shelter he had woven over the years, his cupboard under the stairs with the spiders and the moths, listening to the shifts and groans above.  
  
He expected that it would hurt, that he was going to bleed.  
  
But he didn't expect he'd still have to do his detention.   
  
"Careful, Potter," Snape said, as Harry roused himself drowsily from the desk, pulling clothes and distances back on. "The glass of the vials is very delicate. Don't break them or there'll be hell to pay."  
  
"Yes, Sir."  
  
"Go throw some water on your face first. Your hands are shaking."  
  
The stuffed Phoenix, perched on top of a glass vitrine in the Potion's room had its wings spread, forever frozen in a memory of flight. In the sepia light of the candle flames the claws flickered golden. Harry twitched in surprise when the bird opened its beak and spoke with his father's voice.  
  
"What do you think you're doing?" James said.  
  
Harry's shirt was buttoned up wrong and he felt his face covered in sticky fingerprints. He had probably scraped his forehead on Snape's desk, because after rubbing it he saw his thumb was smeared in ink or dark blood. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, ashamed.   
  
"I have to clean the potion vials."  
  
"Like hell you will." James stared at Harry with his blinkless eyes, little black pits.  
Outside there was a rumble up and down the stairs, as the rest of students made their way to the Great Hall. Tea time.   
  
"Smash them. All of them."   
  
Claiming temporary insanity surprisingly got him off the hook. Snape didn't dare go to Dumbledore, not while the scratches of his nails were still visible on Harry's forehead.   
  
*  
  
Take Two

  
  
Erised. The word whispers languid grace to all with an appetite for fairy-tales come true.   
  
Limping up the stairs of the Museum of Magic, Draco Malfoy knows his way well through the labyrinth of corridors and halls. In the buttery half-light of the afternoon the staccato of his cane splinters the silence, keeping him company.   
  
The mirror is kept hidden from the public, under a sheet, inside a closet, behind a locked door that opens for three wizards only, including himself.   
  
He looks into the mirror every day, and every day he thinks it depends on him. If he would try harder perhaps it could all come back.  
  
He imagines the glass surface broken by water ripples and himself diving into it, like a lake, plunging to the depths below. Swimming in the inner space that stretches into oceans, past all the beautiful, well-dressed people that slide along the glittering dancing floors, through waves thick with memory.   
  
Magic only alters, never creates, he has learned that lesson early enough. But he is the most powerful wizard alive, and if he could try enough perhaps he could bring them back again, and all things that were ever true in him would come out of their secret retreat.   
  
Vincent and Greg, familiar on either side of him as his own shoulders, mother at the breakfast table, father by the fireplace, even Weasley throwing a firecracker into his cauldron and Granger slapping him, because they are necessary too, and Potter, looking up at him, face caked with mud, while Draco held the Snitch up high, for the first and last time, and Harry hated him that day, how he hated him, but still shook his hand and said congratulations, something that Draco himself would never have done. Longbottom's Remembrall and Pansy's pink robes and his quill and parchment and that letter he wrote once, with not much hope, and never got a reply, perhaps it got lost in the mail, but he had written it and sent it all the same, he still remembers the cream coloured envelope.   
  
And if he tries hard enough perhaps he'll have the power to bring them all back. And it shouldn't take long, it shouldn't be that difficult, he just needs a moment, just another moment now.  
  
"Sir? Are you feeling fine?" The voice of the museum guard startles him and he realises he is leaning forward, both hands clasping the frame as if he had been trying to tell the mirror all his secrets.  
  
He is fine. He had just let his mind wander for a moment.   
  
"Can you see clearly in the dark, Sir? Shall I turn the lights on?"  
  
The wrinkled face of the old man, folded in resignation, becomes suddenly lit with a harsh light, as the night torches are set ablaze, but inside the mirror all the faces remain black and empty.   
  
*  
  
Take Three

  
  
It stinks of urine, dead things and yesterdays in here.  
  
And in the dark, every monster flies above us.   
  
The scaled wings of the dragons make a sound like blades slicing through the air as they move through the night. The iron bars of the door rattle and the floor trembles.   
  
It's funny, how we walked on different paths, but found ourselves in the same cell in the end, staring at the same patches of moisture on the floor, breathing the same stale air, ripping the same spiderwebs.   
  
The two of us are not company, there was never anything to share. We're just running in the same yellow solitude, split in half, both pretending to be the one ahead. I played you at cards and lost you, I deceived you, tried to kill you but it seems we're stuck here together, so hey, if you forgive me, I might forgive you too.   
  
There's a gaping hole in the ceiling, but it's too high to reach, to narrow to climb through. No sound apart from the dragons in the night, no Dementor has come for the past two days, not even to bring food or water, and I can't help thinking that the world outside is over, done with, and we're the last ones left, the last in Azkaban.   
  
In the dark, every monster walks over us.   
  
I'm so thirsty now that if I was alone I would have started licking the moisture off the walls, but with you in here I keep my dry throat and my dignity.   
  
I catch you staring at me, numbly, standing like a martyr in the jagged circle of light that spills from the ceiling, the same way I stare at you as we both think the same question. Who will be the one to stare, numbly, at the other one, who won't be staring back any more?   
  
If I stand on your shoulders or if you stand on mine, one of us could reach outside and breathe. Sometimes I want to tell you this, sometimes I feel the broken string of connection binding again between us as we sleep side by side, famished to the bone, and travel together in magical lands of thirst and hunger.   
  
And sometimes I think hey, if I forgive you, will you forgive me too?  
  
In the dark, every monster walks inside us.  
  
Nonsense. The Dementors will be back. As soon as my father pays them off and clears my name, I'm gone from here.   
  
*  
  
Take Four  
  


  
Everyone later agreed that even though Draco Malfoy had cheated once again, his actions probably had nothing to do with the final outcome. He couldn't have possibly anticipated that.   
  
Harry's fingernails were almost scrapping the shiny surface of the Snitch when a yank at his broomstick pulled him back abruptly. He almost lost his balance as the Nimbus swung in the air like a pendulum and grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on, two fistfuls of thin pale hair.  
  
The Snitch, probably miffed about not being the centre of attention any more, changed direction and smacked Harry behind the ear, before falling somewhere between them, wings mashed between their shoulders.   
  
He wouldn't have panicked if Draco had kicked him, or punched him or reached to gouge his eyes out but the cold wet teeth digging into his neck sent an electric shock across Harry's spine.   
  
They whirled, sharp golden wings scratching their faces, and they fell.   
  
It seemed they were falling forever, and it was true, they never hit the ground.   
  
The sky and the earth danced around them as they tumbled, sky above their heads, earth below their feet, earth above, sky below, sky coming closer in a whirlwind of violent blue.   
  
The Quidditch field was quiet as they fell, higher and higher into the sky, both still holding on, both still fighting for the Snitch, becoming smaller and smaller until the sky opened up and ate them with white cloud teeth.   
  
And everything became as it was before, as if they had never been there, the only evidence of their existence that empty space between Vincent and Greg's shoulders and the borrowed omniculars in Ron's hands. They were gone, just like in fairy tales perhaps, scaling up invisible beanstalks to meet the ogre and his wife, to eat or be eaten, to live or die happily ever after. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the sky was blue and huge with nothing to hinder it and they were gone all the same and nobody ever saw them again.   
  
After a short, stunned pause Professor MacGonagal rose from her seat, bringing a hand to her mouth.   
  
"Good grief," she murmured into the air. "Albus, what on earth did just happen?"  
  
The Headmaster shrugged his shoulders, smiling absently. "Magic, Minerva. Magic, what else?"

  


The End 


End file.
